If our health insurance premiums were increasing on average by 1.5 percent each year, would anyone bat an eye? Let’s all admit the answer is “No.”

In fact, the National Conference of State Legislatures website links to a report titled, “State Trends in Premiums and Deductibles, 2003–2011: Eroding Protection and Rising Costs Underscore Need for Action,” that shows our health insurance premiums skyrocketed by 62 percent between 2003 and 2011. Given those kinds of increases over the past eight years, if all we saw in 2013 was a 1.5 percent rise, I’ll bet we’d all be celebrating.

Many of the small-business and individual insurance policies are working the health reform law’s 2014 fees into their 2013 bills, contributing to double-digit premium increases for some people.

All those new consumer benefits packed into the health reform law — birth control without a co-pay, free preventive care and limits on when insurers can turn down a customer — had to be paid for somehow.

Except those benefits aren’t what’s causing those double-digit increases; insurance companies pre-billing their insureds in 2013 for projected expenses in 2014, and plain and simple greed account for all but about 1.5 percent of it — the 1.5 percent that is the result of the PPACA’s assessment of new fees on insurance companies, notany of the benefits Politicoclaimed, according to research done by ThinkProgress.

So the PPACA is only costing you about 1.5 percent this year, which we all agreed we’d be celebrating were that the extent of it. And you may not even be among those whose rates insurance companies want to raise to double-digits, which are only (potentially — they haven’t been approved) affecting a small segment of insureds. Most people who have health insurance get it through their employer. And people covered by employer-based policies will only see a four percent averageincrease in their premiums.

“PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that [actual health care] costs may increase just 7.5 percent next year, well below the rate increases being sought by some insurers.”

So the real story here is insurance companies once again trying to get away with gouging some of their customers – when it isn’t necessary to cover the actual costs of the new requirements or the projected increases in the cost of treatment – while keeping the premiums lower than the expected rise in health care costs for the majority of their insureds.

The secondary story is why Politico chose not to tell you that’s what’s really happening.

Author: Jill KlausenI spent 10 of the last 13 years managing a Political Consulting firm where I worked with many members of local, state, and federal office, including then-City Council Member, now current United States Congresswoman Janice Hahn; Congressman Xavier Becerra; Congresswoman Linda Sanchez; former Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald; former Congressman Patrick Kennedy; Senator John Kerry; Senator Barbara Boxer; and former Ambassador to the United Nations 54th Assembly for President Clinton and current Commissioner of the Advisory Board for the United States Public Diplomacy under President Obama, the Honorable Sim Farar. In the three years since, I've worked as the Field Representative for a candidate for the California State Assembly, volunteered for Janice Hahn's successful campaign for Congress, and was a Delegate to the California Democratic Party from 2010 to 2011. Words and their usage are a passion of mine, and I currently own and operate a Copy Editing consulting firm with clients such as Business Insider, Crooks & Liars, and syndicated columnist Tina Dupuy. You can follow me on Twitter @jillwklausen